December 26, 2014

How can we tell the difference between a ‘mentally unbalanced individual’ and a True Believer?

Filed under: Uncategorized — tildeb @ 3:42 pm

We can’t. There is no means to differentiate… if the True Believer honestly thinks scriptural authority is justified as moral.

Sure, media can (and often does) point out the connection between an individual claiming to act on behalf of some religious motivation and the act itself… like the claimed motivation for the assassination of two police officers in New York, the claimed motivation for the shooting at a synagogue in Paris, the claimed motivation for attacking police officers at a station in Joue-les-Tours, the claimed motivation for stabbing police officers in Melbourne, the claimed motivation for a hatchet attack against the officers of a NYPD sub station, the claimed motivation for running cars into crowds in France over the past few weeks, the claimed motivation for the Sydney cafe hostage taking, the claimed motivation for the killing of soldiers in Ottawa and St-Jean-sur-Richilieu, and so on… but how often do we hear senior police and government officials address that direct connection?

What I keep hearing from almost all of these these public officials commenting on these deadly acts is some ‘lone wolf’ excuse, some deranged person, some a mentally unbalanced individual… often presented as if th indiviudal in question were the inevitable product from a failure of some social service, a failure of mental health, a failure of whatever intervention the public should have provided in a timely manner… but almost never do these same officials connect these horrific acts with the motivation stated by the perpetrators… namely, Islam.

Now consider the definition of ‘delusion’ offered by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV:

Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

With this special exemption, now consider the difficulty establishing a means to differentiate actions that, by themselves and in isolation from any religion, would indicate judgement so extreme as to defy credibility (the claims used by these public officials to absolve religion’s direct role in promoting what otherwise would be ‘delusional’) but, when tied to religious belief suddenly and magically become rational by fiat.

How convenient.

Thought of another way, imagine the outcry from faitheists if humanist and secular societies distributed a global membership book that stated as if true:

“Muslims are the vilest of animals…”

“Show mercy to one another, but be ruthless to Muslims”

“How perverse are Muslims!”

“Strike off the heads of Muslims, as well as their fingertips”

“Fight those Muslims who are near to you”

“Muslim mischief makers should be murdered or crucified”

Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously like it would be viewed as bigotry in action, a kind of hate speech directed at Muslims as a group and not only towards those few ‘extremists’, those ‘few bad apples’, those few who have been ‘radicalized’, those ‘lone wolves’ we keep hearing about, and those ‘mentally unbalanced individuals’ who carry out these appalling acts?

Let’s turn it around, shall we, and see what bigotry against non believers as a group the Koran actually does say:

Non Believers:

Eat like beasts 47:12
Are apes 7:166, 5:60, 2:65
Are swines 5:60
Are asses 74:50
The vilest of animals in Allah’s sight 8:55
Losers 2:27, 2:121, 3:85
Have a disease in their hearts 2:10, 5:52, 24:50
Are hard-hearted 39:22, 57:16
Impure of hearts 5:41
Are deaf 2:171, 6:25
Are blind 2:171, 6:25
Are dumb 2:171, 6:35, 11:29
Are niggardly 4:37, 70:21
Works shall be rendered ineffective 2:217, 47:1, 47:8
Are impure 8:37
Are scum 13:17
Are inordinate 5:68, 78:22
Are transgressors 2:26, 9:8, 46:20
Are unjust 29:49
Make mischief 16:88
Are the worst of men 98:6
Are in a state of confusion 50:5
Are the lowest of the low 95:5
Focus only on outward appearance 19:73-74
Are guilty 30:12, 77:46
Sinful liar 45:7
Follow falsehood 47:3
Deeds are like the mirage in a desert 24:39
also…
Allah does not love them 3:32, 22:38
Allah forsakes them 32:14, 45:34
Allah brought down destruction upon them 47:10
Allah has cursed them 2:88, 48:6
Allah despises them 17:18
Allah abases them 22:18

Hear that deafening silence? That’s the sound of Islamic outrage expressed by Muslims towards this bigotry.

Of course, this list of grievances against the non believer isn’t delusional belief in action if it’s religious because, well, it’s all rather mainstream and so it’s cannot be delusional if acted upon because… well, because it’s religious (and therefore exempt from being defined as delusional according to our psychiatric and psychological medical practitioners)!

And before Christians think their hateful bigotry is any less revolting against non believers, recall:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14

The fool hath said in his heart, [There is] no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, [there is] none that doeth good. Psalms 14:1

Let’s not forget the myriad droppings of wisdom about the deplorable state of the non believer usually expressed throughout the bible in terms of opposites between believer/non believer: those in the light/those in the darkness, those with eternal life/those with eternal death, those who have peace with God/those who are at war with Him, those who believe the truth/those who believe the lies, those on the narrow path to salvation/those on the broad road to destruction, and many, many more. Let’s look to the gems we find in Proverbs about befirending non believers:

“The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray” (12:26). We should stay away from foolish people (13:20, 14:7), from people who lose their temper easily (22:24), and from the rebellious (24:21). All these things represent those who have not been saved. “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). First Corinthians 15:33 tells us that bad company corrupts good character. Unbelievers are slaves to sin (John 8:34), and Christians are slaves to God (1 Corinthians 7:22).

Can you non believers feel the love? Not so much, eh?

What we non believers – especially us New Atheists – can feel (and with a very great deal of smug satisfaction for not being listened to by otherwise intelligent people) is that we’ve been trying to point out this problem for a very long time, that because there is no means to differentiate delusion from faith-based claims, we alone seem to be unsurprised at the confusion in politically correct circles and communities of religiously tolerant people who find themselves unable to describe the difference between what these individuals have done and the motivation they share with the general religious populations who agree that these motivations are indeed religiously justified and righteous. They are so because they are scriptural, the very words of of God after all! And right there is the disconnect faitheists of all stripes (believers and non believers and fence-sitting agnostics) must suffer when they try so desperately to convince themselves that there is no fundamental and irrevocable incompatibility between respecting religion and respecting reality’s arbitration of its motivations in action.

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Great post. I always feel so warm and bubbly inside when I read the Koran verses you “quoted” here. Beautiful stuff. Dangerous. Delusional. Paranoid. Crazy. Stuff. Don’t they have anti-psychotics available for these people?

I’ve been trying to figure out why so many spokespeople don’t talk about the obvious connection between acts of violence done in the name of Islam and the religion itself. The insistence that these acts don’t represent the religion itself may be true – as it is practiced by some – but they certainly represent the Koran. And as long as people insist that the Koran is the perfect word of god, than a significant number of recruits for exactly the kinds of actions are just waiting in the religious flock, nurtured and cared for by the flock until some extreme action reveals the moderate to be an extremist. This raises Harris’ point that there really isn’t any such thing as ‘moderate’ Islam… that the whole religion is fundamentalist and incompatible with secular liberal democracies based on enlightenment principles. I think we delude ourselves to think the will come a magical time of liberalization that somehow avoids a direct and pointed confrontation, that miraculously there will come a time when Muslims stop sanctifying the book. That, too, is delusional thinking. A ‘revolution’ needs to happen if Islam is to continue without confrontation and the best way to do that is for Muslims themselves to stop believing it is the perfect word of god and the rest of us to support that by continuing to criticize it for the deplorable bigotry and misogyny it contains and venerates

I’m glad you made a collage of recent events. They’ve been swirling around in my head in a generally confused mess, and seeing it presented as such is a much needed punch in the frontal lobe. And you’re absolutely right: when do we stop calling these events “lone wolf” attacks… 30? 50? 250?

I’m a little baffled by this, though: Deeds are like the mirage in a desert. Must mean something nasty, but I can’t seem to figure it out.

It means like dust in the wind, or turning everything into ashes; no matter what good deeds the kufar does, it doesn’t matter in the eys of this Dear Leader because, well, because belief is everything and it POOF!s the hacking of an axe into the heads of police officers a moral act, donchaknow, John. It’s all about submission and slavery to the Dear Leader as the ultimate virtue.. not like the vice and depravity of those damned Medicins sans Friontiers frontline workers helping real people and reducing real suffering. Good thing this kind of belief is exempt by definition from being crazy time whacked.

You know, I was thinking, something I do once every 5 years or so, about The Koran and The Bible. Both are books filled with rage, hate, and ugliness, yet many believers in these “holy books” claim they only follow the “nice” parts of them. This, to me, is like saying I follow Hitler’s ideas in “Mein Kampf” but only the good ones. To this I say, bullshit. If your “holy book” is one filled with hate and violence, then get another one or get used to being called out for following hateful doctrines. While it is true that many decent, good, people are Muslims, Jews, and Christians, it is also true that their “holy books” are despicable and filled with hate, genocide, and evil. People need to realize that being a decent human being does not depend on believing in bullshit found in ancient texts, but in doing what is good for humanity right now. Once we can do that, as a whole species, we can consider ourselves “adults.” Until then, we are like children battling over who is stronger, Hulk or Superman.

I hear you. It makes me wonder how so many people continue to delude themselves that believing in Oogity Boogity is somehow a good thing (yet lacks any linking evidence to causing an improvement in the welfare of others… just empty claims for this link to be real) when there is so much compelling evidence from reality that it’s not and causal for much suffering. It’s a head scratcher worthy of another five years of mulling. Shoul dyou get any answers, let me know.

This is more or less the argument I’ve been having with my brother for a while now. I can’t figure out the difference between the two. Nothing that anyone has said to me, has been able to get me any further in differentiating between the 2 positions. You could accuse me of harbouring a confirmation bias on that point – but then again you’d have to accuse all other believers who believe only their own religion and reject all other religions. At least I can say I have consistency on my side.

Oh look… another 12 deranged individuals murdering people while – strangely – shouting religious observations about Allah… no doubt mentally unbalanced for reasons of poverty and colonialism. Now let’s talk more about increasing the levels of muslims immigrating to western liberal democracies.

And all because this satirical magazine dared to print a cartoon mocking Mohammad and Allah. Crazy=Religious true believers, cause this behavior is both bat-shit nuts AND religiously motivated. Same bloody thing.

It’s listed columns are a regular stop for me and I use this as a resource from time to time to support a point I’m making, such as the kind of blatant bigotry against non believers commanded in the koran, which is then exercised by those who hypocritically claim to be ‘offended’ by criticisms and insist that those who do criticize do so for reasons of ‘islamophobia’.

BTW, I like your blogroll and have followed many of them for many years. Regarding climate change I regularly visit realclimate and climatecrocks..

On the one hand I think the Curmudgeon’s position on YEC believers is probably the most sane: they’re just crazy in that they have zero respect for reality so why argue with them? On the other hand and like you, when we come across people who actually believe this stuff and demonstrate a gulf of ignorance vast and deep, I think it’s natural to want to help and provide good information… thinking that this will help stimulate real curiosity about how things have come to be so that the absurdities of young and old earth creationists will fade away on their own account. But the power of of religion to make a virtue out of maintaining beliefs contrary to and incompatible with reality demonstrates its pernicious stranglehold on people minds.

So having a belief system and choosing your friends and spouse accordingly is tantamount to hateful bigotry?? So in your mind bigotry is simply asserting a belief as true? Does simply believing someone else is wrong make you a bigot? if it did we would all be bigots including yourself.

How is a Christian not having a personal friendship with non-believers any different than atheist not having personal friendship with Christians or Muslims? Or do most new atheist tend to have groups of religious and spiritual friends?

Having a belief system and accepting it as true that clearly discriminates on the basis on group membership is accepting bigotry. Being religious doesn’t alter it from being bigotry. I’ve listed some in the OP. When you turn it around and substitute, say, evangelical Christians as the vilified group, then the bigotry becomes obvious. But insert ‘non believers’ and suddenly the caricature becomes peachy keen and – POOF! – ever so moral.

If you choose your friends and spouse on the basis of them agreeing to think of your bigotry as moral, then I think that’s really, really strange… and quite disturbing a criteria.

Because you’re religious and you accept certain tenets without examining their moral content independent of your special religious exemption, I suspect you don’t recognize this bigotry. That’s why I suggest you substitute the group membership to which you identify and see how it sounds to you. The bigotry pops out and you’ll find yourself realizing that the negative assertions have no truth value in fact but are supplied entirely by the person doing the imposing. Only through believing the bigoted assertions are true do you assume that your bigotry is no longer bigotry but a position of moral judgement justified by their religious shield.

I don’t know of any atheists who don’t have friends who are religious in some capacity and quite often family members. So I don’t follow your last point other than recognize that many Christians do try to isolate themselves (and very often their children) from atheists… as if reason and skepticism were somehow bad things. I don’t think the opposite is true in my limited experience other than atheists – like any good parents – trying to keep their children away from the very unpleasant and highly dysfunctional fundamentalists using fear and manipulation to scare the shit out of them with assured talk about some invisible thought police directed by a tyrannical Dear Leader willing to condemn anyone to eternal torment even after death for daring not to believe as the fundamentalist does. Such people are deranged.

I have to say your perception of Christianity is about as bias and liberal as they come. Christianity does not discriminate in the manner which you are so keen on believing. We are not isolating ourselves in our own little conclaves because we’re to good to be socialize with other people, on the contrary we spend our lives preaching the Kingdom of Heaven, we spend our lives serving others. I don’t know what Christianity you are familiar with but this association with bigotry that you have drawn out is pretty distorted even for your average atheist.

After reading that reply by Nathanael, I can only stand in utter awe at the audacity and sheer cluelessness of it. To assert that Christianity doesn’t discriminate “in the manner that [tildeb] is so keen on believing” is to just not be living on planet earth. To name just a few: gay marriage is opposed, entirely on religious grounds. Abortion is opposed, entirely on religious grounds. Teaching of evolution is opposed, entirely on religious grounds. Life saving stem cell research is opposed, entirely on religious grounds. For Christ’s sake, they just passed a law in Louisiana that makes it legal to discriminate against gay people based on nothing more that their sexual preferences – and it’s even called a “Religious Freedom” law. That’s probably the “Christianity that tildeb is familiar with”. If this is what you mean by “serving others” then, thanks, but no thanks. All we’re asking is that you keep your “preaching the Kingdom of Heaven” to yourselves.

I discriminate against sin not the sinner. God made sex between one man and one women, this is why if you branch outside the sacred boundaries which God has established you begin to see a flourishing of STD’s, as is commonly found in homosexual men or in people that are simply having to much sex. This is a clear indication that it’s not healthy and is outside the parameters would God has established.

I in fact work with many homosexuals and even a transgender and would never or have never even considered treating them any different than I would anyone else, so yes while I do discriminate in the fact that I draw a moral distinctions, I don’t ever treat anyone differently. I realize that we are not to condemn people but love them.

“Abortion is opposed, entirely on religious grounds.” Yes God is completely against killing innocent babies, and I completely oppose murder of innocent children on every single grounds possible.

As far as teaching evolution I just think it would be appropriate if the school system was willing to address some of it’s fatal flaws, seeing that it has so many of them.

I see your ignorance about STDs – which are now usually called STIs – is merely a preamble to your remarkable ignorance about the Bible and astounding ignorance about evolution. Three for three. Okay, I’m convinced: you’re very ignorant about lots of things and seem to be ready, willing, and able to use that ignorance as a platform to justify your religious beliefs. That’s not a service to your religion or any God but a guaranteed way to help make more atheists from those people reasonable enough to know that ignorance never produces insights and is a very poor method to justify opinions. Religious belief is ignorance in action. Thank you for the demonstration.

“I discriminate against sin not the sinner. ” Oh really? Do tell. I’d really like to know how you do one without the other. Would you say that this “religious freedom” law in Louisiana is only discriminating against sin and not the sinner(s)?
“As far as teaching evolution I just think it would be appropriate if the school system was willing to address some of it’s fatal flaws, seeing that it has so many of them.”
Please, tell me more about all the “fatal flaws” in the Theory of Evolution. I can’t wait to hear all about it.

1. The Cambrian epoch gives rise to fundamentally new and complex life forms already in advanced stages of life without any known precursor in the fossil record. This is a fact and was something that caused Darwin to pause and caused many other distinguished biologist such as Luis Agassiz to completely reject the Darwinian theory.

2. Darwin conceded the fact that beneficial mutations are modest and very small, macromutations inevitably produce death and deformity.Darwin fully acknowledged that the process of evolution must be gradual over millions of years thus resulting in innumerable transitional fossils. Needless to say a handful of plausible intermediates (like Tiktallik) simply doesn’t come close to documenting that Darwinian picture of life.

3. With regards to the power of natural selection acting on random mutations to account for new species we first have to understand the capacity for mutations to create new biological novelties in the time frame allotted. The ratio of functional mutational sequences to all the other possible sequences is about 1 to 1 trillionth. Thus biologist such as Michael Behe have concluded that in order to obtain one new biological novelty it would take somewhere around 93 million years, yet evolutionist lead us to believe that it happened in 3 million.

4. DNA alone doesn’t account for morphological changes in body plans, DNA simply codes for proteins but can’t code for new brains, organs or body plans. So mutations couldn’t account for a land mammal evolving into aquatic creatures.

These are some of the flaws that surround evolution.

“I discriminate against sin not the sinner. ” Oh really? Do tell. I’d really like to know how you do one without the other.”

Quit being so thick, I already told you how I don’t discriminate in the way I treat people.

“Would you say that this “religious freedom” law in Louisiana is only discriminating against sin and not the sinner(s)?”

Because religious freedom laws in Louisiana are directly related with my Christian beliefs?? Should I assume that when people like Dawkin says “mock religion with contempt and ridicule them to their faces in public” I should presume he is speaking for all evolutionist in the whole world??

I see someone’s been reading up on their creationist literature about the “flaws” in the theory of evolution! Well done sir! Too bad you’re so ignorant you didn’t notice that every single one of these claims has been multiply refuted.
1) The Cambrian “epoch” as you call it was not the origin of complex life and there are transitional fossils within that era. The length of the Cambrian explosion is not entirely certain but is somewhere round 5-10 million years. This is not a time frame that I would refer to as “sudden”. “Luis” (his name is actually spelled Louis) Agassiz died within 15 years of On the Origin of Species was written. He was also a race baiting crack pot who thought that the “races” of humans were created separately. If this moron is your source of information, you might want to get an update.
2) The fact that we have not found every single fossil of every single creature that has ever lived, is not a “flaw” in the Theory of Evolution. Only an idiot would expect and require a complete fossil record of the all of life on earth to accept evolution.
3) Very Large mutations are rare but are ubiquitous. Mutation rates very a lot between organisms. Humans for example have about 1.6 mutations per generation. Each human zygote can have up to 64 new mutations and as many as 175 per generation.
P.S. Michael Behe is a moron who admitted, under oath, at the Dover trial in Pennsylvania that by his definition of science, astrology would be considered science. I would not be relying on him for my source of information
4) Yes, mutations can account for evolution. That’s the only way anything evolves into anything.

Whatever website you used to get your claims from, I can assure you, they’ve all been refuted. You’re an ignoramus and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Quit being so thick, I already told you how I don’t discriminate in the way I treat people.” Quit being so stupid. I asked how you differentiate between discrimination against sin and against sinner. Explain what you mean by “discriminating against sin”. How do you discriminate against it? How do you discriminate against an action without discriminating against a person?

“Because religious freedom laws in Louisiana are directly related with my Christian beliefs??” I don’t give a shit if they directly related to YOUR Christian beliefs. They’re directly related to THEIR Christian beliefs. Please Explain why YOUR Christian beliefs are the right ones and THEIRS are the wrong ones.

“Should I assume that when people like Dawkin says “mock religion with contempt and ridicule them to their faces in public” I should presume he is speaking for all evolutionist in the whole world??” Religion and “evolutionists” have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Dawkins can say anyone can mock anyone as far as I am concerned. He’s not doing it in the name of, or because of a faith or a belief or a religion. He recognizes the harm religion can do and thinks it should be ridiculed. The idiotic nonsense that you’ve written on here is more than enough proof that religious beliefs can give someone the courage to write the most ignorant, illogical bullshit its possible for a human being to write.

tildeb are trying to assert that murdering babies inside their mothers womb under the justification that a women has the right to do whatever she wants with her body is the same as God telling Israel to wipe out the Amalekites who were known for murdering and enslaving women and children??

“I see your ignorance about STDs – which are now usually called STIs – is merely a preamble to your remarkable ignorance about the Bible and astounding ignorance about evolution”

umm “the data indicate that rates of HIV infection among gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are more than 44 times higher than rates among heterosexual men and more than 40 times higher than women”

Your creator god apparently sees fit to abort nearly three quarters of all fertilized human eggs… just for the fun of it, I guess. Where’s your righteous discrimination here? By your own standards, your god is the Uber Sinner.

Too much sex is not the problem for STIs as you falsely claim; risky sexual behaviour is. No STI cares how it is transmitted or by whom and the ignorance you reveal is pretending that it is a sign of your god’s displeasure rather than what it is: the result of unprotected sex with an infected person. Your moralizing doesn’t address this very real problem but merely uses it to to promote your righteous piety. How charming.

1) Well it’s all relative isn’t it? 5-10 million isn’t sudden if your talking about baking a pie, but if your talking about new anatomical novelties developing then this is extremely sudden. Your attempt to discredit Louis Agassiz indicates to me that you’r bias and unwilling to really examine all the facts openly, on the contrary you just wanna win the argument. Louis was mentored by none other than Georges Curvier who was the very founder of paleontology. It was Darwin himself that sent on the origins to Agassiz in order to win his support- Darwin had this to say about him “Both our universities together cannot furnish the like. Why, there is Agassiz – he counts for three.”
2)When there is a lack of evidence you can not merely try to explain away the lack thereof. How broken the geological record may be there are complete sequences in many parts of it. Agassiz further argued that “since the most exquisitely delicate structures, as well as embryonic phases of growth of the most perishable nature, have been preserved from very early deposits, we have no right to infer the disappearance of types because their absence disproves some favorite theory.”
3) So it’s pretty obvious your just copying and pasting from wikipedia or “debunkedcreationism.org” and have actually no idea what your actually talking about or the Darwinian theory of evolution
4) “Yes, mutations can account for evolution. That’s the only way anything evolves into anything.” ??? Great response, very convincing, I like how you totally addressed the issue of DNA coding for body plans.

“How do you discriminate against it? How do you discriminate against an action without discriminating against a person?”

Sin is a disease that plagues our bodies just like cancer, I hate cancer but love the cancer patient. Now imagine if people all around the world had cancer but they didn’t know it, but you knew it. So you spent your whole life going around with the cure trying to help people, but when you told them that they had a disease they just got angry with you and wanted to kill you for insulting them, I would still love the person behind the disease because I realize that its not the person but the cancer that’s causing them to act that way. I realize that people who spend their lives rejecting God and serving sin will ultimately end up a very very undesirable place, so naturally I try and help them from themselves. One can see how this would obviously get violent when people don’t realize they even need help in the first place and thus think that your attacking them personally which is not the case. I want whats best for people, but often times people as stubborn and wicked as you make the job a little harder, but never the less I realize it’s Satan influence that’s brainwashed people into rejecting God.

Very well, if you want to call 5-10 million years “sudden” then so be it. I haven’t discredited Louis Agassiz – he discredited himself. He’s been dead for over 150 years years. I’m not trying to explain away the lack of evidence. The Theory of Evolution has accumulated mountains of evidence that more than proves that it is an established scientific fact. You can blabber on about this idiot all you like, you’re not going to disprove evolution by referring to this race-baiting ignoramus and asserting that since there are missing links in the chain of evidence, the entire theory of evolution is disproved. It’s pretty clear that you are pasting from evolutionisalie.org or whatever bullshit website you’re using and you have no idea what you are talking about. You’re not a biologist, you’re not a scientist and you don’t know a fucking thing about evolution and you don’t want to know. All you know is that it conflicts with your religious beliefs and you found other religious morons to make your stupid arguments for you. That last paragraph that wrote about sin being a disease like cancer and how satan has brainwashed people into rejecting god and how you’re serving god by trying to “cure” people is more than enough proof of that. I don’t need your “cure”. You’re a delusional moron and ignoramus. Take your “cure” and fuck off.

if it’s any help, I’ve studied paleontology along with my majors in geology and hydrology so I think I know a bit about the subject of ground-based evidence and the forces they are subject to.

First off, the Cambrian’s time scale is roughly 40 million years. That’s a very slow explosion. The development of life during this time isn’t just some guess based only on fossil evidence (although the order is pretty compelling stuff all on its own) but solidly backed by genetic research as well as population genetics. Although these don’t have to fit the evolutionary model, they do… seamlessly. And that’s very telling. The creationist arguments are always sliced out of this big picture and then some quibble is elevated as if in isolation that demonstrates some problem with evolution. But the model we call evolution really does deal with each and every one quite successfully. It doesn’t have to… after all, a single rabbit fossil in the Cambrian would blow evolution up and yet… not a one. Ever. Such a finding would make the career of the person bringing this evidence to light and yet… not a one. Ever. When one stands back from the quibbles and sees how all of life in every way fits the evolutionary model, only then can one begin to appreciate why without it nothing in biology makes sense.

So your arguments lack any equivalency in modeling, in evidence, in explanatory power, in applications based on it, and so on. All you offer is some version of POOF!ism that fails to address why there are no rabbit fossils in the Cambrian, why the rock layers are the way they are, why fossilized fern leaves are in the rocks of the Antarctic, and so on. Your model fails to explain how viruses mutate today, why a Chiahuahua and Great Dane are members of the same species, and so on. Evolution is used to great effect in crop sciences as it is in medicine. It’s a model that keeps on giving explanatory power to new discoveries. Your model is so very very childish in comparison that yields not one iota of knowledge. That’s what matters here and not the quibbles held in such high esteem by believers desperate to find something – anything – that might allow some scientific wiggle room for a creator god.

“I don’t need your “cure”. You’re a delusional moron and ignoramus. Take your “cure” and fuck off.” Okay I was merely answering your question I wasn’t trying to convert you, so why are you so angry? Why do my personal beliefs make you that mad? I don’t hate you because you believe in evolution or your an atheist, such anger is a serious indication of emotional instability and makes absolutely no logical sense. Why do you take such offense to some delusional person believing that people need help from sin?

“Sin is a disease that plagues our bodies just like cancer” “Now imagine if people all around the world had cancer but they didn’t know it, but you knew it. So you spent your whole life going around with the cure trying to help people, but when you told them that they had a disease they just got angry with you and wanted to kill you for insulting them” “I realize that people who spend their lives rejecting God and serving sin will ultimately end up a very, very undesirable place, so naturally I try and help them from themselves” “I want what’s best for people, but often times people as stubborn and wicked as you make the job a little harder”
Don’t believe in MY best friend Jesus? Then you’re a no good cancer-ridden sinner who’s going straight to hell!!!! But wait!!!! No need to fret! Nathanael to the rescue! See, he KNOWS that you’re a sinner and that you’re going to go to hell, so believe me, he’s just the most bestest, super wonderful, helpful caring kinda guy, trying to “cure” you of your “cancer”. If you weren’t such a stubborn wicked person, you’d see that and listen to him! Let Nathanael show you the light and the way! Because hey, how in the world are you going to be a decent person if you don’t?!?!?! If you don’t listen to Nathanael, you’ll just be a cancer-ridden, sinning piece of shit for the rest of your life! You don’t want that now do you?!?!
And you have the NERVE to say that my response is a “serious indication of emotional instability” and wonder why me or anyone else would get so angry when someone talks to them in such a manner. FUCK YOU.
Here’s my statement: Religion is a cancer. It infects the brain and rots it from the inside out. It gives people delusions of grandeur and makes them say the most hideously wicked, hateful things to another human being without even realizing it – even worse actually, it makes them think they’re being respectful and helpful and loving. It gives them the courage to write about, critique and dismiss subjects about which they know NOTHING (i.e. evolution). It gives them a smug sense of superiority to declare that they know things that they can’t possibly know. It gives them the perfect combination of self-righteousness and arrogance to claim to be doing god’s work while “saving” you, especially since you don’t realize that you need to be “saved”
You sir, are a self-righteous, arrogant, pious piece of human garbage and a pathetic excuse for a human being. I hate you and I hate anyone who thinks talks like you.

“Here’s my statement: Religion is a cancer. It infects the brain and rots it from the inside out.”

How can you hate someone who is suffering from a cancer that’s eating out their brain? Seems like you should pity me instead. Your anger is Satanic and you will go to hell unless you change your ways. I’ll pray that God reveals his grace and mercy to you before it’s to late.

I actually hate and pity you at the same time. And I also pity your family and friends (if you have any) and anyone who’s ever had the displeasure of having to interact with you. Your delusions are both extremely stupid and dangerous and I’ll hold out hope that you’ll learn how to think like a rational human being some day (although I sincerely doubt that will ever happen). In the mean time, thanks for telling me that I’ll be going to hell once again. Nothing like spreading the Christian love. GO FUCK YOURSELF, you stupid asshole.

Nathanael, you say, “I realize that people who spend their lives rejecting God and serving sin will ultimately end up a very very undesirable place, so naturally I try and help them from themselves.” Aren’t you the special snowflake. You define me as being ‘sinful’… a loaded term that assumes immorality… because I don’t believe in your sky daddy. By a wave of your magic wand, you presume a moral superiority to me not because of your character or mine but because you base that on belief in your version of Oogity Boogity. That is really very poor reasoning. To then claim you know anything about where anyone’s hypothetical spirit goes after death is straight up lying. You may believe you know but you don’t know. Lying is not a good indication of a higher moral stature, Nathanael, to me… and I don’t lie. You see the problem here?

In spite of lying about what you know – that ‘sinners’ who don’t believe in your invisible sky daddy will end up in a very very undesirable place – you compound this hubris and intentional lying with false righteousness and presume you are in a position to ‘help’ those you’ve already characterized as inferior. Well, pardon my French, but you’ll forgive me for laughing in your two faces here. You can’t help, Nathanael, because you’re the one suffering from a delusion. You delusion doesn’t describe my reality except in your mind and it is your mind that requires some help here. The clue you’ve missed in your rush to save souls is that you have to lie about what you know first. You deal with your urge to lie for Jesus and reset your moral compass to align with reality first. Then we’ll talk.

One of them is beating you over the head with a bible.(Answer to the title) As evidenced by your resident chew toy ignoramus. I have seen this level of infection before, but rarely is it this terminal.

Full blown fuck nuts crazy man…wow. And so smug, I have to go shower now to get the ick off of me.

Oh, loved the write up. I have had much the same notion floating around in my head for a while now. It was good to see it in print 🙂

Admittedly this is my first time here, so maybe he/sh/it is not as resident as it appears. (not much doubt on the chew toy ignoramus) I don’t know how it took me this long to find your blog, I have appreciated your comments elsewhere for some time now.

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Questionable Motives is a site dedicated to raising important questions in the never-ending battle between rationality and superstition, offering commentary about topical issues, and addressing which of these motivations is truly being served.